Man laago mero yaar...

I have most fun, I've found, in the throes of an obsession. When I'm hung up on one song, or chasing the meaning behind a haunting, intriguing piece of poetry in a language I have no access to.

Last week it was Adi Shankara. I had heard 'Guru Ashtakam' before but I had not engaged with it as I did now. How direct is this saint-poet, how severe, how unequivocal! In Bhaja Govindam, he begins by chiding: "Chant Govinda, you fool!" 

I am slain by his conviction, the force of his statements... and I lean on him, borrowing – no, taking – from his unshakeable stance some strength for my own shaky base. He is right, he is right! there is no other way to be! No use being turned in any direction but this...

Here are the eight verses as rendered by the wonderful Uma Mohan and group (who have my gratitude for their offerings that come with perfect enunciation and a proper respect for the material. This one is a bit over-orchestrated arrangement-wise but it's grown on me).

https://youtu.be/M9DZ_-K5gTA

Sareeram suroopam thatha va kalatram,
Yashaschaaru chithram dhanam meru thulyam,
Manaschena lagnam Gurorangri padme
Thatha kim? Thatha kim? Thatha kim? Thatha kim?

A beautiful body you may have, and a wife as beautiful,
Great fame and a heap of money the equal of Mt Meru,
But if your mind does not bow at the lotus-feet of the Guru...
Oh, what is the use? What is the use? What is the use? What is the use?

Kalatram dhanam puthrapothradhi sarvam
Gruham baandhava sarvamethadhi jaatham
Manaschena lagnam Gurorangri padme
Thatha kim? Thatha kim? Thatha kim? Thatha kim?

A wife, wealth, children, grandchildren and all
A house, relations, birth in a great clan,
But if your mind does not bow at the lotus-feet of the Guru...
What is the use? What is the use? What is the use? What is the use? 

Shadangadhi vedo mukhe saastra vidhya
Kavithwadhi gadhyam supadhyam karoti
Manaschenna lagnam Gurorangri padme
Thatha kim? Thatha kim? Thatha kim? Thatha kim?

Knowledge of the six angas etc; Vedashastras at the tip of your tongue,
Expertise in the composition of fine poetry and prose...
But if your mind does not bow at the lotus-feet of the Guru
Then what is the use? What is the use? What is the use? What is the use?!

And he goes on thus... dissing our 'accomplishments', what we think of as our successes, piercing the bubble of self-satisfaction. Nothing is worth anything unless you have turned that way, and sent your mind to stick like glue at the Guru-Charan.

It reminded me of a fairly stark statement I came across recently:

The only useful purpose of the present birth is to turn within and realise the Self... There is nothing else to do.

That is Ramana Maharshi speaking.

They've all been saying the same thing, over and over, haven't they?

==========

I had more ear-worms to speak about but this post is laden already. Next time, perhaps.

When the cuckoo sings

It’s been a Japan kind of month. Months after I travelled there, I was called upon to file the story, and the days of August went in remembering, reading, dwelling... and it seemed fitting to have a haiku by the master himself on my header. Matsuo Basho was the man who created the three-lined haiku as we know it today. With the country so much on my mind, I picked up to read Jane Hirshfield’s The Heart of Haiku, and then a long piece on Basho in the National Geographic... it was poignant.

Even in Kyoto,
how I long for Kyoto
when the cuckoo sings
–Matsuo Basho (trans. Sam Hamill)

This haiku, however, has haunted me for a while. What is to be done with this nameless angst? Even in Kyoto the poet longs for Kyoto... what then is Kyoto? Is it an amalgam of every single sight, smell, taste experienced here? Is it an idea, a memory? How does one merge with Kyoto, how to slake this longing? How to hug all of Kyoto?

It happened to me once in Sikkim. We were winding down the hill with the river Teesta flowing by. We wanted pictures and the driver was obliged to drive on for a few kilometres before we came to a suitable vantage point. One spot that gave us a decent glimpse of the hills, the forests and the winding river. I was suddenly so impatient with it. I wanted to soar over the landscape, merge with every blade and drop... I wanted to become the valley and here I was, frustrated, limited to one little fenced off spot, straining to absorb it all.

This, I imagine, is the limitation of our sense perceptions. We can see the tree, but only one side of it, not what’s behind it. We cannot know it, we cannot become it – with this apparatus. We cannot know the tree, even if we have every cell of it under a microscope; we cannot know it in this way.

And so, although content with our little pockets of life, once in a while, when the cuckoo sings, we long for Kyoto.

Srimanthudu

Just back from Srimanthudu. It got good reviews and P decided this was the last chance she was going to give Mahesh Babu. As it turned out, ‘Prince’ redeems himself with an earnest, genuinely heroic role after that string of hero-valiant, seeti-maar, misogynist rubbish.

A nice story with a conscience, I was happy with most things about Srimanthudu, including the time they took to establish the hero’s dissatisfaction with the wealth his family urges him to enjoy. Like Siddhartha Gautama, a whiff of the outside world is enough to lure Harsha into trying to ease other people’s troubles. They’re family, he tells his father repeatedly, and he means it. A man with a capacity to adopt – truly adopt – an entire village. I found him inspirational.

I was less than enthralled with the numerous fight sequences and thoroughly disgruntled with the last one, a final confrontation with a barrage of menacing villains which should exhibited more brains than it did. Also a bit shocked that the resolution to the problem involved murder and arson!

Also, I wish I could have brought myself to like Shruti Hassan, because for once, here was a female lead with a story, a purpose and a mission. However, I found the actor’s puckered-lips reactions to every situation extremely distracting. (Why, why do they mess with the faces creation gave them?) Plus, I’m not a big fan of Tollywood’s female dubbing artistes, who can manage to ruin any talking part at all.

The Telugu industry is having a good run, isn’t it! 

So it is

Broadband internet has been maddeningly erratic for the past three weeks. We have registered our complaint on at least four occasions with innumerable follow-up calls. They came again today and tinkered with a variety of options.
It seems to have worked. I've had uninterrupted connectivity for more than three hours now. The World of the Internet is open to me and, as it happens, I've nowhere to go.

न्रुपत्वदाभ्याम् नतलोक पन्क्तेः *

ए जज़्बा-ए-दिल गर मैं चाहूं हर चीज़ मुक़ाबिल आ जाए
मंज़िल के लिए दो गाम चलूं और सामने मंज़िल आ जाए
 
______
* From Adi Shankara's Guru Paduka Stotram
"Long queues of those who bow are elevated to the stature of sovereigns..."

They walk among us

Hyderabadi autowalas are, by and large, a delightful set. Chatty, warm, funny... of course, we have our cads and they're fussy as to destination, but most of them are decent chaps.

I was dropped off by friends halfway home yesterday evening and found two autos, both with snoozing drivers. I was reluctant to disturb their rest but it was late, and I didn't want to be hanging around Begumpet, so "Bhaiyya?" it was. He woke with a start, "hau, hau."
"Secunderabad chaleinge?"
"Hau, hau, chalo." He was diving into the driver’s seat with almost mindless alacrity.

I sniffed the air. "Peeke hai kya aap?!" (Have you been drinking?)
"Arre nai, Madam, aisa kaisa bolte! Aap pukaare toh pehli baar mein utha na mai? Peeke su logon ku baar baar uthana padta!" Evidently chagrined.
Ok. But I liked his lined face and we discussed destination and terms. I tried to haggle but he cut me off irritably; pay me what you think fit, I won't fight about this! Fair enough, I thought, that's my line usually.

We zipped along and after a little small talk, again: “Peeke hai kya bolke aisa kaisa pooche madam?”
I didn’t see the need for this super sensitivity and said so: “Kaiku nai poochna, bhaiyya? Mera iraada aapki tauheen karna nai tha, apni hifazat ke liye poochi mai. Galat kya hai?”
Two Urdu words in one sentence and he was impressed. Where did you learn to speak Urdu?

Then halfway there, he requests permission to speak frankly. Okay, I say.
“Aapki nazar tez hai, aap sahi pehchaane: mai peeke hi tha!”
I was unsurprised – I’d been alert anyway for traffic mishaps.
“Sharab galat nahin hai, Madam,” he assured me, “lekin kuch log sharab ka naam kharaab karte hain.”
Ok, I said, willing to indulge his argument.

Then he launched into a sher, lauding my perspicacity:

Hum ulaT'te nahi bejan kitabon ke varak
Hum wo padte hai jo chehron pe likha hota hai 

I am not used to turning the leaves of lifeless tomes
I read that which is written on living faces

“Wah!” I said, “kya baat hai!”
Seeing that I had needed no assistance in deciphering that couplet, he asked if he could recite me a sher of Allama Iqbal’s.
“Of course,” I said, “Irshad!”
“Will you understand it?” He was polite but clearly this was to be a test of the depth of my classical knowledge.
“I’ll ask you to explain if there is a word or phrase I don’t understand,” I assured him.
He threw down the gauntlet with:

Ye kainat abhi na-tamam hai shayad
Ke aa rahi hai damadam sada'a-e-‘kun faya kun’

It was not a sound background in Urdu literature or Muslim theology that had me in instant raptures over this one – merely my magpie-like assortment of random knowledge.

Creation is as yet incomplete perhaps
For incessantly comes the wave: ‘Be!’ and ‘It is’

“Do you know what ‘kun faya kun’ means?”
Yes, I did and said, “It is the original hukum or the word.”
My new friend was delighted.

What is your education, he asked me. I confessed to an MA.
And then delicately, how many children do you have?
None, I said; I have never married.

“Oh, your degree is a diploma then!” he said, downgrading me promptly.
Obviously, his values were old fashioned.
“Arre!” I protested, half-amused, “aisa kyon? Mai khud mein mukammal hoon, kisi aur se judna zaroori toh nahin!” (I am complete by myself, surely it isn’t necessary for me to partner someone else…)

He conceded the point and then had a sher for this keyword too:

Kabhi kisi ko mukammal jahan nahin milta,
Kahin zamin toh kahin aasman nahin milta… 

No one has ever achieved a complete perfect world,
Here the earth eludes us, there heaven

(Link to another post on this sher)

I don’t hold with that one, I told him. The poet is simply faint-hearted.

He laughed out at that and said oh, you are like this then:

Khudi ko kar buland itna ke har taqdeer se pehle
Khuda bande se khud pooche bata, teri raza kya hai! 

Elevate yourself so high that at every turn of destiny,
Even God might ask, ‘Speak, what is your will?’

Absolutely, I said.

Sorry for boring you, he said to the end. “Shayari se hum bore nahin hote,” I told him. He agreed: “Bada sukoon wala junoon hai.”

He asked for my name at the doorstep, and told me his.
Sheetal bibi, he called me, 'Sheetal bibi' with such affection as he said Khuda hafiz and shabbha khair.

हुई शाम

बेक़रारी सी बेक़रारी है
दिन भी भारी है, रात भारी है

Watching the wind

Did I say this place was windy? Yes, I did. Let me say it again. W.I.N.D.Y.
Doors are opened with great circumspection. Some wind corridors are so gusty, I sometimes can't advance till the currents let up. I tried to hang a few clothes today on the clothesline and had to stand IN the bucket to keep it from flying away; and what a struggle it was to keep the sleeves from lashing at my face!

I was sitting on a stone bench a couple of days ago, at dusk. The gales dropped for a bit and then, as I watched, I could see the breeze approach. It reminded me of this pretty, very appropriate haiku by Brad Bennett.

watching
the wind arrive
tree by tree

That's more or less what I've been doing this month.

Winds of Change

So, I blog from a new home. After four years with Isha Foundation (at least three quarters of which my sister spent at the Isha Yoga Center at the foothills of the magnificent Velliangiris), we knew this was going to last. We applied for more permanent lodgings at the ashram and we moved in this month. I will now be able to come oftener, stay longer and not wait for an occasion to visit this blessed place. I have indulged myself by coming to stay without a return ticket booked and I can’t tell you how chuffed that makes me feel.

The Velliangiri hills are a wild place. Wild holy men, wild elephants, wild winds. And our building is quite at the edge of habitation. Our bedroom window opens eastwards, looking upon a brook, fields, wilderness, coconut groves and hills. Last fortnight, Shweta had a wild boar sniffing under the balcony, and spied a black-naped hare twice; yesterday I caught sight of a mongoose trundling along the wet mud. Lots of birds – bold white headed babblers, swifts, bee-eaters, robins, bulbuls, lapwings... and an abundance of butterflies.
And of the Grace that cascades down these mountains, I cannot speak, because it is beyond speech.

Today is the summer solstice. This season – I’m so lucky to be here at this time! – Sadhguru calls “the annual fest of the wind”. He says, “Sometimes, the winds are coming down from the mountain at 120 kms per hour. These are winds of change; we are shifting from Uttarayana to Dakshinayana. A significant change in the way the planet’s energy spheres operate. The winds are significant as a symbol of blowing away the past and beginning a fresh cycle of sadhana. Very significant for all spiritual seekers.”

And believe me, the gales are very purposeful. This is the first time I’ve actually heard wind howl, the doors and windows are being rattled constantly, we’ve lost our doormat, we've had to retrieve our dustbin from the floor below, and I’ve had to reassemble our coconut-stick broom after the winds had hacked it quite furiously. Anything that isn’t nailed down goes with the wind. It's exhilirating.


A few views:

View from the balcony

From the bedroom

Dawn breaks over our patch of the earth

Rain so dense you can't see a thing

हम खता ही खता

था उन्हे भी मेरी तरह जुनूँ तो उनमे मुझमे ये फ़र्क़ क्यूँ?
मैं गिरफ़्त-ए-ग़म से ना बच सका, वो हुदूद-ए-ग़म से गुज़र गये

Two of me

I’ve been wondering what triggered it off. Has the direction of the sunlight changed, giving the birds a more reflective view; or was there a peculiar cloud cover that enhanced visibility? Because the car stands exactly where it has stood for years. Or perhaps it’s just this one narcissistic bulbul who finds his own image fascinating.

He has been making loving noises to himself all morning and oh, goodness, there is bird poop all over my rear window mirror.

Edited to add:

Aasheesh Pittie from Indian Courser is telling me the noises my bulbul makes are far from loving - this is territorial aggression, except, of course, mistakenly directed at his own image.
I think I'll dust off some 'raqueeb' shers.

विनती

सूर कहे, श्याम सुनो... शरण है तिहारे
अब के बार पार करो, नंद के दुलारे...